RECENT WORK ON VOLCANOES 87 



Of these, Leon Compere-Leandre, a shoemaker, was sitting on his 

 doorstep at the time of the blast ; he rushed indoors and 

 sheltered himself under the table. Four others came running 

 into the room, one of whom, a child of ten years, dropped dead 

 and the others fled. He himself came out from under the 

 table and went into another room, where he found an old man 

 who had fallen dead on his bed ; the corpse was blue and 

 swollen, but the clothes were intact. After finding the rest of 

 the people in the house were dead, he threw himself on his bed 

 and lost consciousness. At the end of an hour he woke up 

 to find the roof burning ; then, covered with burns, he fled and 

 reached Fond-Saint-Denis, three miles distant, where he was 

 attended to. He said that he had not felt a sensation of suffoca- 

 tion nor was there a want of air, only that the air was burning. 



The other man who escaped was Auguste Ciparis, a negro, 

 who was shut up in a cell in the prison without a window and 

 only a narrow grating in the door. He was waiting for his 

 usual breakfast on the 8th when it suddenly became dark ; 

 immediately afterwards hot air entered his cell through the 

 grating. It came gently but fiercely. There was no smoke 

 nor noise nor odour to suggest burning gas, but it burnt his 

 flesh ; he was clad in his hat, shirt, and trousers, but these did 

 not take fire, yet beneath his shirt his back was terribly burned. 

 The water in his jug was not affected and this was all the 

 nourishment he had till he was rescued three days later. 



Most of the victims seemed to have succumbed instanta- 

 neously, as if from a blast of choke-damp. Some were burned 

 internally, having as the coal miners say, " swallowed fire " ; 

 in some instances their heads burst ; others were scorched all 

 over. A doctor's carriage stood ready before the house with 

 the charred body of the horse in its place before the carriage ; 

 the metal parts remaining showed that it had not moved and 

 the coachman was by its side. Clothing was never burned, 

 but the victims in the streets had their clothes torn off them 

 by the rush of the blast, as happens sometimes in a severe 

 tornado in America. People in the outer zone who were 

 rescued fell into two classes : those who were burned internally 

 — that is to say, the upper part of the respiratory canal was 

 destroyed ; these all died. Of the others, some were singed 

 all over, whilst some again were burned on the face and on 

 their hands, and these mostly recovered quickly. 



